21 May 2002
Old Hall Street hotel and residential development, Liverpool, on site
Work has started on site at Liverpool’s Old Hall Street, a new £45 million development from Beetham Org with architect Abbey Holford Rowe to house Liverpool’s first £1 million private apartment. Structural, building services and fire engineering are by Buro Happold.
The development embraces a 27-storey residential tower block with 132 luxury apartments, complete with resident’s swimming pool and health club, next to a 200 bedroom 4 star hotel for Radisson SAS. The complex forms part of Liverpool City Council’s major redevelopment plans for the city. The triangular shaped site was previously home to St Paul’s Eye Hospital. The new development is due to complete early in 2004.
Structural Engineering
The residential tower block, partly clad in large white concrete precast panels, is to be reinforced concrete flat slab construction, stabilised by a jump formed core. The hotel is in-situ concrete up to the second floor, with a transfer beam spanning 7.8m between columns. This is to accommodate the change in grid between the public spaces and the bedroom floors. The bedrooms will be arranged around a structurally glazed atrium.
The bedrooms are on a 3.9m grid, the cellular layout provided by high quality precast concrete large panels forming slabs and walls, which can be decorated directly, without the need for additional plasterboard. This concept has programme and cost advantages.
Building Services
A combined heat and power (CHP) unit shall be installed for hotel usage. With an electrical output of around 200KVA, the generated electrical supply from the CHP unit will feed the LV switchboard essential section, dispensing with the need for a standby generator. The CHP system will also complement the production of LPHW heating for general hotel consumption 24 hours a day and is an environmentally friendly solution for the large heating demand for the domestic hot water supply.
Parts B & F of the Building Regulations governing basement levels car parks, state that in order for the car park to be naturally ventilated, each car park level must have ventilated openings on one twentieth of the floor area, half of which must be on opposing walls. What is particularly innovative about Old
Hall Street’s underground car park is that Buro Happold Services and FEDRA have designed the underground car park so that there will be a combination of natural and mechanically assisted ventilation. This was possible by adopting a hybrid ventilation approach. One fortieth of the floor area was provided as ventilation openings and a lower mechanical extraction rate employed. This resulted in the ventilation being capable of managing smoke from fire and production of CO from car engines. A reduction in the extraction rate also reduced the capital costs associated with the car park ventilation strategy whilst maintaining the performance requirements of the Building Regulations.
The electrical distribution will be to 800amp TPNN bus bars, which will feed local distribution boards on each floor.
Local consumer units are provided (one per two rooms) which provide power locally to the bedrooms. Each bedroom in the hotel and each apartment in the residential block will be served via an indoor cassette unit for comfort cooling.
Computational Simulation and Analysis
Buro Happold’s CoSA division carried out a computational study to assess the affects of wind on the site and the resulting safety of the pedestrians in the surrounding area. The report, which analyses the microclimate, was carried out using computational wind engineering (CWE) proposed measure to mitigate turbulence on the structure of the building and on the entire site. This report was prepared in support of the planning application. The report made the suggestion to add further design features to improve on-site conditions, such as canopies, berms and tree planting. These suggestions were implemented by the architect.
Background information for Editors:
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Buro Happold is a multi-disciplinary international practice of consulting engineers established in 1976 offering civil and structural engineering, mechanical and electrical engineering, quantity surveying, building services and environmental engineering, infrastructure and traffic engineering, geotechnical engineering, façade engineering, fire engineering, computational fluid dynamics analysis, access consultancy, project management, urban design and a range of specialist CAD services.
